Views & Opinion Aiming high – how Student Growth
Percentiles will help every student to progress Comment by Damian Betebenner, Ph.D., USA National Centre for the Improvement of Educational Assessment
Imagine two high-jumpers – the first is a
champion, while the second is a relative newcomer to the sport. Over the course of a season the champion high-jumper improves their personal best high by 1cm, while the newcomer’s jump improves by 10cms. At first glance, we’d think the novice has made
more improvement, however in fact the greatest progression is by the champion. At the top end of the sport, progression of 1cm over a season is actually a better demonstration of improvement than relatively normal growth of 10cm at the lower end. Despite being in the same sport, the champion
and the novice are not equals, and comparing progression of the two is like comparing apples and oranges. This is the same for students, and comparing
growth across a class or year doesn’t reflect accurately how each student has done. What is needed is a way to measure students with their own academic peers – so we can compare the growth of similar students to see how each is progressing in relation to their equals.
This is what a new measure of growth already
widely used in the US and being launched for the first time into the UK will allow schools to do. Renaissance Learning has launched Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) to allow teachers to compare the level of growth of their pupils with tens of thousands of other students across the UK. SGPs are now available as part of Renaissance
Learning’s STAR Assessment software. Teachers can see a snapshot of each student’s growth based on two testing windows (e.g. autumn and spring term) and compare them to their academic peers – students nationally of roughly the same age and ability who started from the same point. This creates a context of peers that was inaccessible before. The SGP score — ranging from 1 to 99 and
analogous to height and weight percentiles of children — shows how much growth each pupil is making in comparison to their peers – those in the 1 -34 percentiles are displaying low growth, the 35 – 65 percentile are typical while students in the 66th percentile and above are displaying accelerated growth.
Crucially, SGPs are a measure of progress not
attainment. Measuring attainment is only one side of the picture since high attaining children could display low growth, and low achieving children could equally show high growth. Schools have struggled with growth at either
end of the spectrum, and SGPs dispels myth that high achievers can’t progress as much. By comparing similar students you can accurately see if they are making enough progress, or not. With the Department for Education keen to see
the progress of every child and the removal of levels from the National Curriculum, schools are under increased pressure to measure progress. SGPs have been in use in the USA since 2006, where they are now a proven measurement metric for over a million students. Thanks to Renaissance Learning, educators in the UK will now have access to this tool. So to return to the original analogy, teachers will now be able to accurately measure growth to ensure that they can help all students jump as high as they possibly can.
How the election will shape education
Comment by Professor Upkar Pardesi, co-founder and chairman of
MyEd.com For all three major political parties, the
commitment to improving education has been a key area of focus within pre-election manifestos. The means in which they plan to tackle and improve education standards, are, however, very different. Both the Conservatives and Labour parties
have pledged to ‘protect’ the education budgets, but they plan to do so without factoring in the increased financial burden which will be placed on the sector in the coming years. With an additional 300,000 primary school pupils expected to be enrolled by 2018, the current education budget - even if protected from cuts - will prove woefully inadequate. The Liberal Democrats announced recently
a promise to commit an additional £2.5bn of funding for two-to-19 year-olds in education by 2020. In doing so, they differentiated themselves as a party looking to actively inject a sizable amount into the sector, and this approach may be crucial in appealing to UK parents. The party hasn’t made clear how the
funding will be distributed, however a key area for focus will likely be around the creation of an additional 500,000 primary school places, with a particular focus on larger inner-city schools where class sizes are exceeding 30 pupils per class.
MyEd.com recently conducted research with
YouGov, to gauge the education policies which resonate most positively with UK parents. The results showed that a cap on class sizes is the most heavily prioritised policy. This is interesting - the issue of class size will come under increasingly heavy scrutiny, and whilst smaller classes are favoured by parents and teachers, maintaining a cap on numbers will be difficult unless the government actively increase the number of schools across the UK. The Labour party is, so far, the only one to explicitly address the issue of class sizes, by pledging a cap for 5, 6 and 7 years olds.
MyEd.com’s research also highlights the
importance parents place on ensuring teachers are qualified. This was the second most critical policy for parents, and both Labour and the Lib
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www.education-today.co.uk
Dems have pledged to address the ‘issue’ within their manifestos, by ensuring all teachers are either qualified, or in the process of becoming so. The Conservatives have steered clear of the debate where possible - academies (a central part of Tory education plans) are given freedom to employ teachers regardless of whether they are qualified. It is, of course, tricky to identify the impact of employing unqualified teachers upon education standards and results, but certainly within parents’ minds, it’s an issue which needs to be addressed. Increasing pupil numbers, teacher shortages,
and a reluctance to adequately bolster the education budget are key issues which will sculpt the sector over the next few years. Whichever party (or parties) takes control following the election, there is a very real threat that schools and teachers will be asked to do more with less, and despite increasing expectations and pressure enforced by parents, it will ultimately be the students who pay the price.
May 2015
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